New Top Dog Entertainment rapper Reason had one of the surprise rap albums of the year with There You Have It. A cold-eyed examination of life on the streets, the album solidified his spot on one of the best rosters in rap. His new video for “Colored Dreams,” his third single from the album, takes it a step further, lingering on the tragic results of street violence spurred by harmful standards for masculinity.

While Reason uses his lyrics to decry the gangster mentality that leads to so many tragically shortened lives, directors Marcos Jay Teno and Jessica Lorenzo show a set of vignettes that end in shootouts, capturing both the tragedy and everyday mundanity of outbreaks of violence in the inner city. In the first, a young man defending his home and family from a late-night break-in is killed during a struggle with the burglar, while in the second, a group of young friends hanging out in their yard are shot at by a passing car during a drive-by. Reason himself overlooks these events both as omniscient narrator and as a version of himself writing letters to loved ones while locked up.